I've been noticing that most of my games have crashed with a server disconnect (exit to main menu). It has been happening late, after Experimenters have shown themselves. I was having problems replicating it, but I can finally repeat it.

For the particular save game I am using, it is turn 208.
After loading the game, it takes a while before the screen refreshes, the galaxy is visible, and the turn button shows up.

If I click the "turn" button in the next 6 seconds or less, the game stops with a server disconnect.
If I wait 10 seconds or more, the turn processes normally and the game doesn't crash. (!!!)
(Is there some process running in the background that is still active even after the new turn starts?)

I compared the log files for the "normal" turn and the "bad" server disconnect.

I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable has ideas of what would cause the server to stop like that (not getting to the PostCombatProcessTurns) or cause an "End of File" exception. Or why it would depend on how quickly the turn button is pressed.

Another save file, this one using the most recent official test build (2017-03-20.60b8488).
It has the virtue (sin?) of being consistent, causing an EOF termination no matter how long I wait before pressing the next turn button.

I cannot reproduce this on Windows and Linux. Which means that this is a Mac specific issue.

Another observation I made: When clicking "Load Game", the load game dialog box does not pop up immediately, there is a noticeable lag, which apparently gets longer to more savegames it has to read in, and the bigger those savegames are. I don't get this lag on Windows and Linux. Maybe related...?

Vezzra wrote:Another observation I made: When clicking "Load Game", the load game dialog box does not pop up immediately, there is a noticeable lag, which apparently gets longer to more savegames it has to read in, and the bigger those savegames are. I don't get this lag on Windows and Linux. Maybe related...?

Are the save files in these cases of similar sizes? Are they saved in the same format?

I suspect that this has something to do with the Experimentors.
I've tried 3 games, with the same random number seed and Galaxy setup.
What changed were the "scripting" files that affected the Experimenters.

1) Modified monster_fleets.inf so that spawnrate=10.0 and Not WithinStarlaneJumps jumps = 4
For the game that had Experimentors in the galaxy, the EOF server failure happened on turn 210, a short while after the Experimenters were spawning. (This was the 2nd or 3rd time that the Sitrep warned about Black Krackens being seen.)

2) Modified monster_fleets.inf so that spawnrate=10000.0 and Not WithinStarlaneJumps jumps = 16
For the galaxy that did not have Experimentors, I have reached turn 270 without the EOF problem (and still going).

3) Brought back the Experimentors, and changed the EXPERIMENTOR_OUTPOST.focs.txt file, so that the EXPERIMENTOR_SPAWN_BASE_TURN is now 100 instead of 200
Got the EOF problem on turn 107. (I'm far away from the Experimentor outpost, but they are probably active.)

EDIT:
4) Changed the Exp base turn to 20.
The game actually "quit unexpectedly" on turn 22, with a EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV).
Restarted from the turn 20 save game, and just hit next turn (instead of "playing"). Got the server disconnect on turn 40.

Last edited by mem359 on Fri Mar 24, 2017 12:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Geoff the Medio wrote:Are the save files in these cases of similar sizes? Are they saved in the same format?

Just reran my tests on all three platforms, on Mac and Windows with the contents of the save game folder were identical (just copied the save games from my Mac to my Windows system), and on the Linux systems there were a few additional save games in the save game folder. Format of all savegames should be compressed XML. Size of savegames ranging from 275KB to 2.5MB.

On Windows and Linux the load game dialog pops up without noticeable delay, on Mac it took 8 sec.